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It is claimed that the idea that William Strachey's True Reportory returned to England with Gates in 15 July 1610 is an unwarranted assumption (made by the commentators Gayley and Wright) based on the fact that known primary travel documents refer to only one voyage to England after that date (which would not have been in time to influence the The Tempest), namely, De La Warre’s ship which left Virginia on 28 March 1611 and arrived in England 11 June 1610.
You are totally in error if you believe this is our argument. I have no idea where you got this idea from, but it's incorrect. In addition, De La Warre's ship returned unexpectedly to England. He was not intending to go to England at all when he left Virginia, and so it would be highly unlikely that he would be carrying any mail bound for that country. Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
The authors maintain that if the document had travelled on this later ship it could not have influenced the play, despite there being 19 weeks to its 1 November performance. As the authors dramatically put it, if the Strachey letter had travelled on this ship “the case for its influence on the Shakespearean play collapses”. In Ben Jonson's Prologue to Volpone, Jonson gives an insight into the time it takes to write a play stating: “five weeks fully penned it/From his own hand, without a co-adjutor,/Novice, journeyman or tutor.” So 19 weeks seems ample time for Shake-speare (whoever he was) to read the True Reportory, write the play, and rehearse the actors.
Since the letter would not have been on De La Warre's boat, this is a rather useless argument; however, that the letter would have gone to the company, that someone would have taken it up to Shakespeare, that Shakespeare would have written a highly complex play, had the roles copied, and given out to the actors, that the actors would have learned it and that the set was prepared for Whitehall in such a short amount of time, is, imo, highly unlikely. And besides, we are just editing a paper now that demonstrates that Tempest was very probably written by 1603 at latest. Another paper, coming out in December, will demonstrate that Tempest was very likely a Shrovetide play, so the best that one can say, even if one doesn't accept the dating argument, is that De La Warre's ship would have arrived after the play was performed. Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
The authors also assume without reason that the absence of details of other ships travelling between Virginia and England means that there were none.
Actually, Strachey says this himself in True Reportory: that the ships would reappear the next spring. So there are no other ships going or coming. Mizelmouse 23:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
This aside, the authors main argument is that the True Reportory could not have accompanied Gates on 15 July 1610. The reasons they give for this are as follows:
We certainly don't acknowledge that the ship could have arrived in England and gone to the company without Martin having access to it. Have you done any research at all? Have you even read our paper properly? Richard Martin was Secretary of the Virginia Company in England. He presented material such as True Declaration for publication at Stationers, as Tom Reedy told me. If Martin had no access to the letter at the company, neither did anyone else. And yet, the letter going to the company and then going onto Shakespeare is the lynchpin of the Strachey theory. Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
You have missed what follows, which is rather important: "The king’s son, Kainta, the lord governor and captain general hath sent now into England until the ships arrive here again the next spring, dismissing the old werowance and the other with all terms of kindness and friendship, promising further designs to be effected by him, to which he hath bound himself by divers savage ceremonies and admirations..." We wondered how the letter, or rather 23000 word manuscript could be on the ship while Strachey was writing in it that the ship had left. There is however, a copy of an earlier letter by Strachey, which might have gone on the ship. .Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Furthermore, the authors claim, it is not as if these events occur at the end of the document (which would have cleared up the problem) for it “continues for another seventeen hundred words of text, mostly inserted, with attribution, from True Declaration (registered Nov. 1610).” Closer inspection of Wright's publication of the True Reportory shows that in fact Strachey's letter continues for less than two hundred words, before terminating with some kind remarks to the “right noble lady” it was addressed to. The seventeen hundred words of the quite different True Declaration are not part of Strachey's letter and have been inserted by the publisher of Louis Wright's pamphlet of 1964.
I have no idea what you mean when you say that the 1700 words of True Declaration were inserted by the publisher of Louis Wright's pamphlet--do you mean his edition of True Reportory?--and what is more, this shows your profound ignorance of the subject, as the excerpt from True Declaration, along with other interior excerpts, were in the 1625 edition of Strachey in Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625). Wright speculates that the excerpt was added by Purchas, but this is by no means proven. Another problem is that there are other excerpts inside True Reportory, most of them redacted in the end portion. Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
In addition, no events beyond 15 July 1610 are described in William Strachey's letter. If the letter was not sent with Gates back to England, why did Strachey terminate it on the date of Gates' departure and not continue adding to it?
Why does Jourdain's narrative end a month before Gates' ship goes to England? Why does the earlier Strachey letter end five weeks before there was a ship available to carry it to England--if in fact it was written then and not later? Why do any number of narratives end at a certain "satisfying" point that does not necessarily accord with either the date they were written or the date they were sent? This is a common occurrence with narratives. Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with publication, but with showing the document to the Council of the Virginia Company, to whom Strachey is addressing his remarks. If you see anything about possible publication in that excerpt, please point it out.Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
My conclusion is that, with high probability, the True Reportory travelled back to England with Gates on 15 July 1610 and that the authors cannot sustain their case to the contrary. (Puzzle Master 21:02, 11 November 2007 (UTC))
Your conclusion might be worth more if you had read the documents in question, which quite obviously you have not. Must dash for the airport. Will amend later as necessary.--have added some material above. Mizelmouse 23:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
I have never tried to dupe anyone. It is not my way. I have noticed, however, that you have made all sorts of egregious mistakes in setting out our case, and I'm not sure why. Of course, I would never say that you were trying to dupe people. I don't pass off interpretations as facts, by the way. When something is an interpretation, in one way or another I will say so. Not only that: the fact that one can interpret the Strachey information in so many ways, and there are so many problems with it--it wasn't published, there is an earlier version without all the sources, there is no evidence that it ever reached Shakespeare, there is evidence that the officers of the company hadn't seen it, there is evidence from Strachey's own mouth in 1612 that a document that sounds like it wasn't finished, there are other published and well-known sources that are much richer and cover more ground--significantly diminishes the likelihood that Strachey's work influenced Shakespeare.Mizelmouse 01:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Your assertion that Martin must have seen the Strachey letter if it arrived is what you'd like to believe. No one has any idea who it went to when it first arrived.
In fact you're right. No one even has any idea if it DID arrive. But if it DID arrive at the company, Martin would certainly have seen it. As I said, he was the Company Secretary. He was also Strachey's friend from his theatre days.Mizelmouse 01:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
That's the problem I have with you, your religious zealotry that refuses to see anything else but your own pre-1604 dating agenda.
Religious zealotry? Moi? That's a laugh. I'm not religious and I'm not a zealot. In fact I started out believing that Strachey posed a real problem for Oxfordians, but I found something by mistake, and my ensuing research into the question, together with Roger's research into secondary sources, changed my mind. I think if you ask most people who have seen the evidence, they will say, for example, that the Strachey parallels, particularly the "storm set" parallels, occur in other earlier works. This having been demonstrated, it is almost impossible to hold onto the idea that Strachey was a necessary source. Mizelmouse 01:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You accept whatever supports your view and reject everything else which apparently involves being nasty to your correspondent hoping he'll go away (I won't).
First of all, I wasn't nasty. I just pointed out that you hadn't read some of the material, and had for the most part interpreted what we'd said incorrectly. If you think that's nasty, you should spend a week or two on a Shakespeare newsgroup. That said, if you're not going to go away, at least read the sources you're alluding to. No matter what you say, you have not done so, and you will continue to make awful errors if you don't. Mizelmouse 01:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Your sidekick Ben-SPAM-Jonson (he knows what I mean) is exactly the same.
Who's being nasty now? This kind of argumentation gets you nowhere. Surely you don't think it helps? Mizelmouse 01:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You're perfect for each other! (Puzzle Master 23:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC))
I hope so. We've done some good work together that has been accepted by major journals. I note that in your answers this evening, you have not made any substantive argument against what I said earlier. You have just spread a bit of invective about. If you had actually researched the question, you might have been able to mount a defence of some kind. Mizelmouse 01:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Many of the "points" you made, such as that Wright's publisher added the material from True Declaration in the 1960s, didn't need diluting because they were just out and out wrong. I corrected you, but you haven't even acknowledged your mistakes, never mind contributed anything meaningful afterwards. Mizelmouse 14:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
The Attorney General and Solicitor General were on the Council. How do you know that the Strachey report was not for King James' benefit and one of these commissioned it on his behalf?
How did either the Attorney General or the Solicitor General commission something from Strachey for James? Strachey was in Bermuda and thought lost till he got to Virginia--not that anyone would have thought to commission anything from him anyway, even if they knew that and could have reached him, as he was almost a complete unknown. This is a new and jaw-dropping theory, I must say. Very inventive. And without even a scintilla of evidence to support it. Mizelmouse 14:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
After all, Sir Francis Bacon (Solicitor General) was adviser to the king on the Virginia Colony and he was on the Council. It would make sense because King James saw The Tempest and the allusions in it to the Strachey report would then be meaningful to him.
But surely if the ms came over in September 2010, according to your theory, The Tempest would not even be thought of, never mind written, as it depended on the Strachey ms for a source. So why would whoever supposedly gave the ms to James know that it would be meaningful to him in terms of The Tempest? In any case, the question of where you got evidence for this bizarre riff on the original story still pertains. Mizelmouse 14:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
"Martin would certainly have seen it" is not certain when other viable possibilities are available (unless Martin was the lady addressed in the letter - that is, a transvestite!)
You're saying that James WAS a transvestite? And that Strachey would have dared address him in feminine form? In fact, I'm glad you brought up the "noble lady." It seems to me that neither an ms to the company (the traditional view) or a ms to the king would be addressed to a lady. This raises insoluble problems for the orthodox, which they skate around with all sorts of speculations. In fact, the only possible explanation for the orthodox is that as the company wished to see all mail that came in from Virginia, they got hold of the ms before it went out to its intended recipient. But then it seems odd that they would send it to Shakespeare,rather than on to the recipient, whoever she was, as it was a private "letter." Mizelmouse 14:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Neither of us knows. When no one knows we're left to estimate probabilities. I'd say there's a high probability that if Strachey finished his letter on the day of Gates' return to England it was intended to be sent with him. No events are mentioned after that day in the letter - it makes wonderful sense Lynne!
I disagree. The ms says quite plainly that the ship and the people on it had been "sent" to England. A bit of shifting around tenses can make it look as though the ship is despatched but has not sailed, but it cannot be said that this is certainly the case. And the narrative picks up again for a few words after True Declaration is printed, something people always try to ignore or explain away. There could be several reasons for this. In any event, as I've said before, many narratives of the time were "shaped" to a certain set of circumstances. Strachey also used a whole raft of sources to build True Reportory. We don't believe all those sources could have been available in Virginia, especially as much of it was burned or looted. We had said originally that we would buy the story that an earlier version went back, and was then injected with much of the sourced material later. Now that a copy of an earlier letter has been found, missing most of the sources, I think we were most likely correct.Mizelmouse 14:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
And I'm sure you're a lovely lady but on these forums you hide it well!
Of course I'm a lovely lady, Barry. But that has nothing to do with research, which you apparently have not conducted, however lovely you yourself are. Mizelmouse 14:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Take it easy. (Puzzle Master 10:28, 12 November 2007 (UTC))
I can't. I'm working on two essays and a novel. But thanks for the thought. Same to you. Mizelmouse 14:09, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I've noticed that you are very creative, especially in your ability to invent scenarios and evade questions about them.Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
when I decided that I didn't want to let you get away your wild accusations. You labour under the misapprehension that I have done no work on this. But anyway, the research that I have done is not relevant to this discussion.
Actually, it is, very much so. You haven't read any alternative sources, you haven't read secondary sources on the question, that much is painfully obvious, I don't think you've even read Strachey or you'd see the problems in it, and if you've read the whole of our first paper, you misunderstood it so badly that you made egregious mistakes in responding to it. Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm more interested in the conclusions that you draw from your own research.
That's pretty clear, since you have little enough of your own to fall back on.Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't doubt that you have done much background reading and that deserves credit. I do doubt that you draw fair conclusions from your evidence. Any theorist needs to be clear at what stage his/her theory is falsified if it is not to become a religiously held belief. I don't get the impression discussing this with you that there is any point that you would accept as contradicting your theory.
In fact, you are quite mistaken. I constantly discuss or argue our theory with someone who HAS done a lot of research, a Stratfordian, and as a result I often modify what I say or think about the subject. I believe he does also, though it takes him ages to admit it.Mizelmouse
In other words, it isn't capable of being falsified so it isn't a theory, it's a belief.
A theory is a belief that is hopefully based on evidence. As our papers are published, I believe you'll see we have plenty of that, whereas those who originated the Strachey theory and speculate on how the manuscript got to Shakespeare have no evidence at all to show that it did. All we are doing in our first paper is questioning theories people have held for years and positing alternatives. Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
The idea that Strachey's letter ends on the date Gates sailed suggests with high probability that it did so because it was to sail with Gates.
Um, who says it was to sail with Gates? Strachey says nothing of the sort and no one else even mentions it before 1625. Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
You can't (refuse to?) accept this point and so I think that you over-emphasise interpretations that support your case and under-emphasise ones that don't.
I have never denied that the letter MIGHT have gone back with Gates' ships, although it could not have gone in its published version, as material in the first person was certainly added after the publication of True Declaration, and other material might well have been added to the manuscript or deleted from it before it was published. Purchas, for example, Strachey's publisher, was well-known for his additions, changes, and deletions. Strachey might have had a pile of stuff before his "dear lady" adieus that was deleted by Purchas, either because he was bored or because it didn't fit his chronology. He was in fact known for doing so. Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
No amount of trying to demean me, my credentials, and my ability will alter this fact.
I've said nothing about your credentials--I have no idea what they are, and don't put much store by anyone's--or your ability. All I am criticising is your arguing a case without having done the requisite research. Your awful blunders attest to this. I have never before seen someone try to argue that the end portion was added by Wright's publisher in the nineteen sixties. This simply shows that you haven't read Purchas or the secondary sources. There are a terrific lot of things that I won't argue about, because I'm just not knowledgeable enough and I'd quickly look a fool. You seem to harbour no such fears. You are arguing with me on work we've spent ages researching, without even having had the grace to do your homework, and it shows. Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to be more positive but that's what I actually think. Sorry. (Puzzle Master 15:58, 12 November 2007 (UTC))
You don't have to apologise. That's fine. I don't really mind what you think. The criticisms and opinions of the Stratfordian who has done the research, on the other hand, are of major importance to me and I weigh them carefully. Mizelmouse 17:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I'm sorry. I had forgotten, while answering you, that you are a Baconian, in which case my question to you is this: Why, if Bacon was Shakespeare, would he need Strachey at all to write Tempest? He was extremely intelligent and very well educated--he went to Trinity, didn't he?--and would certainly have known the earlier sources such as Eden, Ariosto, and Erasmus well, probably in their original languages. He was also certainly aware of earlier travel narratives. In around 1618, Strachey even sent Bacon his later manuscript, History of Travel. Culliford, Strachey's biographer, says that this was a "last desperate attempt" but Bacon apparently took no notice of him. I imagine Bacon would have seen immediately that it was heavily plagiarised from already published sources. In any case, Bacon neither acted as Strachey's patron nor helped him publish. IMO, knowing these facts, the possibility that he would have used Strachey's True Reportory to craft Tempest is a complete non-starter, so I'm not sure why you're hanging onto the theory like an overboard sailor hanging onto a piece of wood in a stormy sea, unless it's simply to preclude other candidates. Mizelmouse 16:21, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
I've just done a huge response, but there was some kind of edit conflict, and I've lost it all unless I want to merge it, which I don't have the energy to do. So I'll just say you've misunderstood the extra material at the end of TR and still attribute it to Wright, you've misunderstood about what I said about Strachey copying (interior passages)from TD, and you've misunderstood just about everything else. So unless you decide to read the sources, primary and secondary, so you have some idea of what you're talking about and what I'm talking about, I think I should just go back to finishing my novel, which is way overdue. Mizelmouse 00:34, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
That's total rubbish. I'd never even heard of an edit conflict till I saw it on the page, and I'd kept looking for the post for ages. It had simply disappeared, except in a form where I'd have to integrate it all. If anyone would like me to re-answer Puzzle Master's final points--which by the way, are in major error, please start a new section with just those on it, and I'll be glad to respond. With regard to the rest of your argument:
1. I always admit when I'm wrong. It's the simplest and easiest and most honest thing to do. 2. The fact that you don't understand that Puzzler's point about Wright adding end material to True Reportory is completely wrong and absolutely ludicrous shows that you haven't read the sources either. Mizelmouse 16:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
My novels are usually pretty good, or at least, they often win awards here in Canada and good notices in the States. Make sure you buy a copy of the new one, Minerva's Voyage, when it comes out. It's for teens, which you might enjoy. By the way, our articles have nothing to do with authorship, more a second look at the primary and secondary source material with regard to Tempest and a demonstration of why some of the previous criticism is likely incorrect. Our work has been accepted by major orthodox journals, so it must have something going for it. I wonder, are you saying that truth can only be truth if written by Stratfordians? Mizelmouse 16:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
(Felsommerfeld 17:12, 13 November 2007 (UTC))
I write for adults too. I'm sure there are people who are much smarter than I, but there is no one who works harder. I didn't rely on what others had said about Tempest previously, but researched everything myself with regard to Strachey, argued it out with the only other person (a Stratfordian) who had himself done a great deal of research after seeing my first attempts, and I wrote the papers in conjunction with a professor of English, who researched all the secondary sources. I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are. Perhaps you can tell us where you've been published, and what research you've done that confirms the validity of work on Tempest by scholars such as Furness. It would be so much more appropriate if you demonstrated your own expertise in the field rather than sarcastically slamming the attempts of others to find the truth. You might also be interested to know that many orthodox scholars are now moving away from the theory that Strachey in manuscript was a necessary source for Tempest. Mizelmouse 19:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
By the way, I've attempted to put up my responses to the Puzzler twice, and they keep disappearing, perhaps because they're so long. I've sent it to someone else to try, and if that doesn't work, I'll put them somewhere else with a link. Mizelmouse 19:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Something I dredged up on Kathman's defense of Strachey - it's the signature at the bottom that caught my eye. And well reasoned.Smatprt 06:38, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
"I've looked again at Dave Kathman's essay, and, I'm afraid, remain unconvinced. The evidence that will establish a particular text as a 'source' may take a number of forms. The easiest is, of course, a continuous recollection of an original. So, in this play, the fact that Prospero's 'Ye elves' speech is derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses via Golding's translation is inescapable. Shakespeare must either have known it off by heart, or have been referring closely to it as he wrote the speech. Dave Kathman's argument for the Strachey letter is rather that accumulation of a number of small details generates a constellation of ideas and phrases only to be found in that particular source and in The Tempest. There is, of course, a potential here for a circularity of argument - as indeed Dr Kathman recognises - in that some of the parallels he cites are fairly tangential, and could only be entertained if one first accepts the larger contention that Shakespeare had read the Strachey letter closely. I would want to argue that this is the case for virtually all the instances he collects.
So, for example, he cites Strachey's 'we... had now purposed to have cut down the Maine Mast' as a parallel to the boatswain's 'Down with the topmast', but apart from the consideration that this must have been a necessary action in any storm, one might think that Ovid's Metamorphoses 11. l. 158 in Golding's translation, which reads 'Anon the Master cryed strike the toppesayle, let the mayne / Sheete flye' is both rather closer, and derived from a source which undoubtedly Shakespeare was consulting as he wrote the play.
Kathman cites Strachey's 'Prayers might well be in the heart and lips' as precedent for the mariner's cry 'to prayers! To prayers', but, again, this is part of standard storm description, and can be found, for example, in Newton's translation of Seneca's Agamemnon: 'To prayer then apace we fall, when other hope is none'. The description of St. Elmo's fire in Ariel's speech, which Mowat also considers 'echoes only Strachey amongst the play's recognised infracontexts', has, to my mind, a analogy at least as close in Erasmus's Colloquy, 'Naufragium', where (in a modern translation) 'the blazing ball slid down the ropes and rolled straight up to the skipper ... After stopping there a moment, it rolled the whole way round the ship, then dropped through the middle hatches and disappeared'. (There are one or two other possible parallels to this source in the play.)
Overall, I would still stand by my feeling that whilst the Strachey letter is a *possible* source for The Tempest, it is not a *necessary* source, in the way that Ovid or Montaigne both are, nor does it provide a particular point of reference in the way that The Aeneid does.
In the end, of course, it's very much a matter of individual judgement - members of this list might very well, and properly, be more convinced than I. Greenblatt famously characterised source hunting as 'the elephant's graveyard' of literary criticism - and what is most interesting, and most important, are the kinds of investment one brings to tracking down sources, and the different kinds of consequence one draws from their recognition.
David Lindley, Professor of Renaissance Literature
School of English, University of Leeds"
posted by Smatprt 06:38, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
BARRY'S POINTS ANSWERED.
Barry: You said that "If Martin had no access to the letter at the company, neither did anyone
else". Your argument for this is that "He presented material such as True Declaration for
publication at Stationers".
Mouse: That is not my argument. You appear not to have understood it. That was an addendum to my argument that showed he was involved in the running of the company, including taking care of documents. My argument was actually that he was secretary of the council of the company, and so it was his job to be aware of what came in in terms of material and what was done with it.
Barry: The True Declaration was written in-house as an attempt by the Company to counter
information from returning colonists about the poor conditions. While the Strachey letter blames the natives, the True Declaration blames the settlers who it claims antagonised them.
Mouse: The Strachey manuscript blames the natives? Have you read it? Strachey blames poor government, the lack of supply, as well as idle colonists, conspiracies, the lack of fish in the river, famine and illness, the indians having burned and looted, etc.
Barry: The Strachey letter was not written in-house and neither was it published by the Company. It evidently was of a confidential nature. How do you know that Martin had priority over everyone else (including the Attorney General and Solicitor General who were on the Council) to the contents of this confidential missive? This is your published claim and if this is your speculation it's best to say so.
Mouse: It's not speculation at all. Richard Martin was the SECRETARY to the Council of the
Virginia Company in London.. He was an MP and a prominent lawyer. He was also a friend of Strachey's, and wrote to him in Dec 1610 on behalf of the company asking for an account of the colony. In other words, he was involved in the Council's everyday concerns. Can you suggest how the ms would have gone to the company without being seen by Martin? Confidentiality--if the ms was confidential--would be no reason, as it was the council who saw confidential materials. I have never suggested, by the way, that the AG and the SG would not have seen the Strachey document, only that Martin WOULd have seen it if it had gone to the company.
Barry: You say "I have no idea what you mean when you say that the 1700 words of True
Declaration were inserted by the publisher of Louis Wright's pamphlet"
Mouse: That's because Wright didn't write a pamphlet, so I have no idea what you're talking
about. Strachey didn't write a pamphlet either. He wrote a 23,000 word document.
Barry: .May I respectfully suggest taking a look at Wright, p. 95, who says "A True Declaration of Virginia was published by the company, out of which I have here inserted this their public testimony". These words in Wright appear less than 200 words after Strachey's mention of Gates' departure, in other words, just after the end of the Strachey letter.
Mouse: May I respectfully suggest YOU read Wright. He says nothing of the sort. Wright was
the editor of Strachey's True Reportory, as rendered into modern spelling in the 1960's. The
words above form part of Strachey's True Reportory as published in Purchas His Pilgrimes in
1625--its first publication. The argument is not whether Wright appended these words and the
excerpt from True Declaration at the end of True Reportory. It is whether Strachey or Purchas did. I don't see how you could have read Wright and misunderstood it so badly, because the fact is that Wright speculates that these words were added by Purchas
Barry: Of course, you know the difference between Strachey's True Reportory and the Virginia
Company's True Declaration. The latter has nothing to do with Strachey although I'm puzzled
why you suggest in your paper that Strachey wrote it!
Mouse: Huh? We say nothing of the sort. We suggest that Strachey incorporated a few bits of
True Declaration into the middle of the text of True Reportory, as the parallels are obvious.
Wright even points out one of them.
Barry: You say about the Strachey letter "nor do they [words about Gates' departure] constitute
the conclusion of the document, which continues for another seventeen hundred words of text,
mostly inserted, with attribution, from True Declaration". I don't get it!
Mouse: Perhaps, if you read the Strachey, you would. Our theory is that Strachey added these words, which follow on directly from the rest of the text, and also added much else, when he got to London. Another theory is that Purchas added them. Either way, it contaminates the text in our opinion.
Barry: Gates' departure is indeed mentioned in the past tense. Not a huge problem - could have
been to provide a consistent tense for the reader.
Mouse: But it isn't a consistent tense. The tense is slightly different, which has led to speculation that the ship might not have left.
Barry: Then you ask "Why does Jourdain's narrative end a month before Gates' ship goes to
England? Why does the earlier Strachey letter end five weeks before there was a ship available to carry it to England--if in fact it was written then and not later? Why do any number of narratives end at a certain "satisfying" point that does not necessarily accord with either the date they were written or the date they were sent?" But Strachey's letter ends on the day the ship sails and the ships are not that frequent! Looks suspiciously like a causal connection to me!
Mouse: Strachey is known to have been an embroiderer, a plagiarist, and more. He might well have written the narrative, using manifold sources, to cash in on the popularity of Jourdain, etc., and shaped it to that episode only. It could, in fact, have been written well after July 10, or it might have had material added or deleted by Strachey or Purchas--who was known for that kind of thing--long after. Or Strachey might have written it by say, 1612, but not sent it. In fact, he was still sending out his other work, History of Travel, mostly unchanged, in 1618, although a first draft must have been written by 1613. I also note, as another example, that Columbus' son wrote about his father's escapades as if he were there and they had just happened. However, the son must have been about five at the time, and the narratives written much, much, later. There are many similar examples. I trust this answers your questions. If you'd like to argue further, please read the appropriate texts first.Mizelmouse 19:42, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Mouse: OK, you've lost me already. Purchas edited and published True Reportory in 1625. It appears to contain some passages (not too many)that are also in True Declaration. There is also a longish 1700 word extract from True Declaration at the end of True Reportory, This is not presented as a separate document but is included under the same chapter(s). What is more, the contents of it are mentioned in the editorial material at the beginning of chapter four, the chapter in which it appears. It all comes under the title of True Reportory in Purchas. The whole of True Declaration had been published by December 1610. Wright did not publish True Reportory at all. In 1964 he edited a modern spelling version of it, published by the University Press of Virginia. Mizelmouse 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Strachey finished writing his letter on the day Gates' ship sailed (there were only two hundred words to write)
Mouse: I've already told you that I don't believe that was the case. There is some evidence that True Reportory contains later material by people such as Smith, there is evidence of many sources that were probably not available in Virginia, there is no evidence the company ever got it, there is evidence from Strachey in 1612 in Lawes that he is "perfecting" a manuscript that sounds just like it, etc. Mizelmouse 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
and it got back to England before 8 November 1610. Someone in the Virginia Company read it and rewrote it as the True Declaration before registering it on 8 November.
Mouse: No, this is impossible. True Declaration contains material from people who evidently settled in Virginia earlier than Strachey, from a dispatch by De La Warre that Strachey might have had a hand in, from a report, possibly oral, by Sir Thomas Gates, from Jourdain, and possibly from an earlier draft of Strachey's ms or from other voyagers. Mizelmouse 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
The aim of the rewrite was to reassure potential investors by countering the word-of-mouth reports that returning colonists might spread about the poor conditions.
Mouse: But for the most part True Declaration is very different from True Reportory. It would take a miracle to turn one into the other. Mizelmouse 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Now I want to be clear I understand your objections. (1) The secretary Richard Martin (in England) wrote to Strachey (still in Virginia) in December 1610 requesting details about the plantation that were later to be found in the Strachey letter, so he couldn't have received it at that time (and the Gates ship would have been back in England by then). Your reasoning is that being secretary, he had priority over anyone else in the company to see a confidential document and if he hadn't seen it then no one else had.
Mouse: Barry, you keep attributing to me words or ideas that are nothing to do with me. I haven't said he had priority. I said he would certainly have seen it if it went to the company as he was the Secretary of the Council of the Virginia Company. Thus, if he had not seen Strachey's ms, no one else in the company had either, because it hadn't been received by the company. There is also another point. Strachey clearly didn't mean it to be a confidential document. It was found among Hakluyt's papers in 1616 after his death, so it rather looks like Strachey had sent him the manuscript for publication. Mizelmouse 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
(2) You also say that since Strachey mentions the Gates' departure in his letter, the letter did not go back to England with Gates. Also, Strachey could not have finished the letter in time for Gates' departure because another seventeen hundred words of the True Declaration were still to be written (or plagiarised) by Strachey before it left Virginia.
Mouse: No, it's nothing to do with plagiarism. At the end of the document that was published as True Reportory someone (Strachey? Purchas?) says, in the first person, that he has inserted part of a book called True Declaration that "was published by the company." It is impossible that this passage could have been written before Nov/December 1610, when TD was published. So either it was Strachey, who hadn't sent a finished ms back, or it was Purchas, when he was editing Strachey's ms between 1616-1625. There are other bits in the True Reportory document that appear to come from True Declaration also. They are for the most part redacted from the end portion. There is also source material in True Reportory from about 10-12 other writers such as Erasmus, Ariosto, Virgil, Acosta, Horace and Eden. In other words, it's a concoction, and used sources that of course Shakespeare had access to much earlier. Mizelmouse 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, tell me where this deviates from your theory. (Puzzle Master 02:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC))
Mouse: I've told you briefly. There's much more. If you want to make a case that Bacon might have written True Declaration, that would be a very interesting take. But your other dog doesn't hunt as far as I'm concerned. Roger and I are just editing a forthcoming paper of ours that gives evidence that Tempest was written by 1603, and another that says it was a Shrovetide play is also forthcoming. I also notice that on your website you keep referring to the Strachey "pamphlet." This suggests to me you haven't read it, as it's not a pamphlet at all. It's a 23,000 - 24,000 word narrative, close to book length. You also give evidence of parallels between Shakespeare and Strachey that can be found in other much earlier and richer sources. Thanks for the conversation. Mizelmouse 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
(2) The "answers" to Martin's questions Lynne cites are not answers, but part of the history of the colony up to July 15. Martin is not asking for information he already has, part of which is in True Declaration. Martin is asking Strachey for his honest opinion on the situation of the colony, including its relations with the Indians. He is not asking for reasons why the colony failed until De La Warr got there, which is what Strachey wrote in his letter. Therefore, the "answers" in the letter are not in response to Martin's letter.
(3) The letter as written is not the Virginia history Strachey said he hoped to write in the preface to his Lawes. In that preface Strachey said he would write what he had seen both in Virginia and Bermuda, but the only Virginia experiences in the letter stop at July 15. Strachey was there for more than a year later, including the time Dale was governor, and he witnessed a lot more noteworthy events during that time that he meant to write about in his uncompleted History of Travel into Virginia Brittania, as is obvious from his projected table of contents he wrote to Northumberland. It is likely, though, that Strachey would have used some of the material in the letter, given his habit of recycling his material.
Bottom line: there is no plausible evidence that the Strachey letter was written after July 15, 1610, or that it did not reach England in September, 1610.Tom Reedy 01:25, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Tom Reedy 18:49, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
This article has a lead that is larger than many articles. The TOC doesn't even show on my monitor - and I have a hi-res monitor. I tried shortening it by splitting the bulk off with a new section and it was reverted.
It seems to me a short intro is reasonable, but a huge intro is just an article that is not well laid out. --Michael Daly 21:22, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
The article itself is quite long so the lead is going to be long. Look at the article on William Shakespeare as a good example of similiar length. According to the MOS, the lead should mention the major points discussed in the article and should be no more than 4 paragraphs. The present article seems to meet those descriptions.Smatprt 00:00, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
wp:lead - The lead section, lead, lede, or introduction of a Wikipedia article is the section before the first heading. The table of contents, if displayed, appears between the lead section and the first headline. The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, summarizing the most important points, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic according to reliable, published sources. The lead should not "tease" the reader by hinting at but not explaining important facts that will appear later in the article. It should contain up to four paragraphs, should be carefully sourced as appropriate, and should be written in a clear, accessible style so as to invite a reading of the full article.Smatprt 05:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Why does this article spend so little space on the overwhelmingly held view of Academics that William Shakespeare is the real author? Anyone coming fresh to this issue would think it is a a lived debate; in reality it is nothing of the sort. The academic community has all but given up on the argument on the grounds that all the evidence points one way. Even the term 'Stratfordian' is considered absurd as it suggests there is an issue at stake. My suggestion is that there should be a separate article dealing with the orthordox position and the reasoning behind it. I fear that this article is always going to end up being colonised by obessives.
--John Price (talk) 18:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Minor introduction changes
I made some minor changes to the introduction to make it slightly more concise and balanced. I felt that 'no writings of any kind' was sufficient, 'detailed will' was a matter of opinion and that 'any school or schools he might have studied at is a matter of speculation' was better suited to go in front of the 'no records of admission' part of the sentence. That the 29,000 words included variations of the same word is information from Bill Bryson's book on Shakespeare which I believe is a reliable source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.68.10.50 (talk) 17:16, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
To fellow Shakespeare scholars: I would like to incorporate some if not all of the following list of arguments into the Shakespearean authorship article. They are:
13. There is not one smidgen of evidence to prove decisively that the author had to have traveled to France and Italy in order to write the plays. Even Italian scholars have not been able to prove that he had been there. Italy was a traditional place to set a play and local color was available in London and his sources.
14. There is not one speck of valid evidence that the author had to have been a courtly gentleman to know of courtly language, manners, hawking, tennis and other kingly sports. Almost everyone was interested in sports then as they are now. We may know the terms as observers, not as participants
15. There is not one trace of evidence to prove that Shakespeare's education, reading, sources, and conversations with knowledgeable persons could not have given him his large literary vocabulary. The plays indicate he could write. His name as an actor in Jonson's plays and his own indicates he could read, or else how could he have read and memorized his lines? It is not being presumptuous or arguing in a circular manner to say that if Shakespeare wrote the plays then he had to have the knowledge to do it.
16. There is not one modicum of proof that the author had to have had a formal legal education to have written the plays and poems. Law was often used by all dramatists as figurative language. All of Shakespeare's plays have a legal basis.
17. There is not one corpuscle of evidence to prove that the 17th Earl of Oxford or his father-in-law William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, ever destroyed any or all the evidence linking Oxford to the plays to protect Oxford and his reputation.
18. There is not one flyspeck of evidence to hint that the Stratford-upon-Avon authorities purposely destroyed the school records which, Oxfordians say, would have revealed that Shakespeare had never gone to school there and therefore could not have written the Works - thereby destroying their thriving Shakespeare industry.
19. There is not one tittle of evidence to prove that there was a universal conspiracy of silence among those who knew that Oxford had written the Works, but would not reveal it. What a coup it would have been for the one who would reveal it, if there were anything to reveal. If there were other conspiracies, they are not analogous here. To say that there was no conspiracy and that the authorship was an "open secret" seems ridiculous. How could the secret have been kept open yet unrevealed until 1920? It is against the nature of man.
20. There is not one scruple of evidence to prove that because Shakespeare engaged in necessary business ventures to invest his money and necessary legal suits to protect his rights, that he wrote only for money and had no interest in his plays. He earned money, there were no banks as we know them, he invested it, he lent it, and expected to be paid back at the then usual rate. Those seemingly paltry sums for which he sued were not paltry then when you could buy three loaves of bread for a penny. With 240 pence to the pound that would be the equivalent of 720 loaves for a pound sterling. At a cost of about $1.50 for moderately priced good bread today, a pound would equal $1070. But values were different then. I can't imagine anyone paying a thousand dollars for a one pound Folio in 1623. When Pope wrote that Shakespeare "for gain not glory winged his roving sprite, and grew immortal in his own despite," it was his opinion.
21. There is not one granule of evidence to prove that the word "ever-living" in the Sonnet dedication indicates that the author was dead in 1609 as was Oxford who had died in July of 1604. If "ever-living" was widely used of dead celebrities, in the Sonnet dedication it refers to a living immortal. There is no surrounding evidence to disprove it. Printing had been introduced into England in 1477; there were many words and meanings that had not yet appeared in print.
22. There is not one dust-speck of proof to indicate that the occurrences of "ever" in various lines indicate that they are either direct or indirect references to E ver, i.e., Edward Vere.
23. There is not one shred of evidence to indicate that any of Oxford's heirs attempted in any way to retrieve their father's hidden fame - especially since all the so-called need for the presumed concealment was over, if there ever was a need which has never been proved.
24. There is not one smithereen of evidence to prove that any of the early plays which were seeming sources for the later plays were the early work of Oxford.
25. There is not one crumb of verifiable evidence that the Shakespeare monument in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon was redesigned to put a pillow and pen in Shakespeare's lap rather than what appeared to have been a sack of grain in the presumed original or that that presumed original ever actually existed. A painting of the monument, before the refurbishing in 1747, reveals that it was essentially what we have now. Other similar existing monuments of the period have similar pillows. The Dugdale engraving with the seeming sack was obviously made from a poor sketch of which there are many in Dugdale's work.
26. There is not a penny's worth of evidence to prove that because Shakespeare stored and sold grain at one time or another that he was therefore a grain merchant rather than a dramatist, or a hoarder of grain in time of need. He owned land, it was farmed, it was stored, and it was inventoried. There is no record that he sold it for gouging prices
27. There is not a drop of evidence to prove that if Shakespeare's father, mother, wife, and children were illiterate then Shakespeare was also illiterate. There were, by the way, other literate "marksmen" who knew how to write but also signed with their mark when they chose to. A cross was a religious symbol.
28. There is not one blip of evidence or likelihood to prove that the forty-three-year-old Oxford, if he wrote the works, would even deign to write, the servile, submissive, and self-abnegating dedication to the seventeen-and-a-half-year-old Earl of Southampton that prefix both Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
40. There is not a spark of evidence to prove that if it were widely known that Oxford was the author of the plays and poems he would have to have feared for his life.
41. There is not a smitch of evidence to prove that the Earl of Southampton was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth and Oxford.
42. There is not drip of evidence to prove that there is so much court gossip and there are so many recognizable noble individuals in the plays and poems that every effort had to be taken to keep the author secret lest their identity might be deduced or discovered. Biographical conjectures relating the plays and Sonnet personages to the Oxford family are pure conjectures.
43. There is no evidence to prove that Shakespeare left London near the turn of the century in 1604 or was bribed to leave London. to leave the dramatic field open to Oxford. On the other hand Oxfordians say Shakespeare received a dispensation from the Queen to write plays on courtly personalities and controversial historical subjects. If the plays and poems were so socially revelatory of private family affairs and dangerous politically, why were they permitted to be published later?
44. There is no evidence to disprove that the man who is buried in the grave at Stratford-upon-Avon is not the actor/dramatist whose arms (awarded to his father, John) were later disputed in the Herald's office London noting Shakespeare as "ye player", the more especially since those arms are displayed on the monument on the chancel wall of Holy Trinity in Stratford and the inscription on the monument below the effigy specifically and punningly refers to the decedent's leavmg "living art, but page, to show his wit", and also compares him to Socrates and Virgil, hardly a reference to an illiterate yokel. The fact that the inscription reads as though the body was within the wall merely tell us that the carver was not aware of the burial in the floor of the church.
45 There is not a drop of evidence to prove that any theory based on drawing short lines ("match-sticks") through lines of the sonnets which have the letters of Oxford's name under them proves that Oxford was the author.
46 There is no valid proof that the sonnets reveal Oxford as the author by initial letters, acrostics or so called ambiguous lines.
47. There is not shard of evidence to prove that the annotations in the recently discovered Oxford copy of the Oxford family Bible were not there when the book was purchased.
48. There is no valid proof that the correspondences between Oxford's language and Shakespeare's proves that they are one and the same person. Mere knowledge of the same words is not enough; it is their use that counts.
49. There is no proof that Shakespeare's Warwickshire speech would have been unintelligible in London.
50. It is interesting but proves nothing that Disraeli, Emerson, Whitman, Clemens/Twain, Whittier, Lord Palmerston, Prince Bismarck, Galsworthy, Freud, Charley Chaplin, Lesley Howard, and a small army of others doubted the authorship of Shakespeare. Were any of them solid scholars in Shakespeare? Sow the seeds of doubt and doubters will spring up. Would the publication of an even longer list of such non-professional believers make the Oxfordian thesis more credible?
51. If it be said that there is a lack of positive evidence for Shakespeare, there is no valid evidence for Oxford beyond two or three references to Oxford as a penner of comedy only, none to tragedy. The uncontested name, portrait, and preliminary encomia in the Folio compiled by his colleagues are all that is necessary for proof of Shakespeare's authorship.
52. To say that to believe that Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems is unimaginable and beyond reason is to indicate that the speakers themselves have spent their reason to imagine and reason that Oxford is the likely author.
53. The language of poetry does not require anyone to believe that the author is being autobiographical when he speaks of his impending death or old age or being lame. One of my own very first poems when I was about eighteen speaks of my fears of death. If there is anything really autobiographical in the Sonnets, it has not yet been discovered.
54. Oxfordian writers and speakers are most convincing when discussing the authorship problem among themselves, when they quote other Oxfordians as evidence, and have no orthodox scholar at hand to present the opposing evidence. When the current Earl of Oxford (Lord Burford) lectures alone, he is very convincing. When he and I presented our evidence before over 900 people in a "trial" at historic Faneuil Hall in Boston on November 12, 1993, the fourteen member jury decided in favor of Shakespeare. A reference to the crowd at this "trial" is made with pride by Oxfordians, but it does not mention that the Lord Burford lost his case.
55. One of the most vociferous objectors to the authorship question I know (this was many years ago), was a man who did not own any orthodox books about Shakespeare. There are well-read scholars among the Oxfordians, but it would seem that they read orthodox biography not to learn the truth but to find points to quibble about. Quibble as they can, they cannot rail the name or attribution of the forty-five pre-Folio plays to Shakespeare, corroborated as it also is by other documentary evidence.
56. There is absolutely no valid evidence to prove that Oxford or the Pembrokes were either leaders or members of a consortium to write the Works.
57. There may be doubts, but mostly no evidence to prove that if a tradition was written down for the first time after Shakespeare's death that it can't also be true - unless it is too ridiculous to believe - for example that Shakespeare was given a thousand pound gift for the use of his name, to leave London, or whatever.
58. Oxfordians protest widely against the term genius when applied to Shakespeare because to accept the validity of "genius" would explain Shakespeare - a truly assimilative genius. If Oxford could be a genius, so could Shakespeare.
59. It is no proof to say that if no letters from Shakespeare exist he therefore did not know how to write.
60. Is it proof of the "great conspiracy of silence" that Oxford was the hidden author because no monument to Oxford remains, no letters, no tribute to the great loss that the world of drama had sustained, because all Oxfordian evidence was purposely destroyed, and that THAT lack of evidence IS evidence enough to prove that Oxford wrote the plays and poems?
61. It seems peculiar thinking to say that because there is no evidence for Oxford he is therefore the concealed author of the plays and poems and then to say that all the evidence for Shakespeare's authorship is invalid and manufactured?
62. Can it be reverse proof that Oxford’s monument was destroyed because there was or was not a tribute to his dramatic craftsmanship on it?
63. There is no evidence whatsoever that Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth prevailed on Oxford not to reveal that he was the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare.
64. It is incomprehensible to believe that Ben Jonson talked with Drummond of Hawthornden about Shakespeare and wrote about him in his "Discoveries" and elsewhere, that he did so while knowing, as it is claimed, that the author was really Oxford.
65. It is proof that Shakespeare was not the author of his works because there are fifty allusions to Ben Jonson's death, but none to Shakespeare’s? Jonson was fortunate in having a friend to start collecting tributes which were printed in Jonsonus Virbius?. Jonson was poet laureate and a scholar and translator besides.
66. While Ward Elliott of Claremont-McKenna College admits that more computer testing remains to be done, I find it impossible to believe that the many tests his group has done showing the disparity between the vocabulary, grammar, phraseology, sentence length and structure, and punctuation of Shakespeare and the so-called claimants will show that any of them are the possible authors. As with Cinderella, others may have her qualities, but if the shoes don't fit, the other similarities mean nothing. Elliott wrote that he was looking for the fingerprints of the author, but the two authors did not match. He also put it another way. He said that the results of their group’s studies might be compared to a blood test. If Shakespeare is Type A positive then Oxford tested out to be Type Z negative! Professor Elliott has since published an article that once again shows, by many verbal and grammatical tests, the absolute impossibility of Oxford being the author.
67. There is not a shard of evidence to prove that Dr. John Hall thought his father-in-law William Shakespeare was of no importance because he left him out of his book of medical cases - Select Observations. The first volume of his notes covering the year 1616 has been lost.
68. There is not a pellet of proof that the silence of Susanna Hall or the neigboring Rainsfords, the Earl of Southampton, Philip Henslowe, Edward Alleyn and others about Shakespeare as a playwright means that Shakespeare was not the author. Camden's mention of Shakespeare "as one of the most pregnant wits of our time" in his Remaines Concerning Britain of 1605 discounts all of the possible silences.
69. There is not one scintilla of verifiable evidence in Oxford's extant letters intimating that he had written any of the works of Shakespeare.
70. There is not a DNA particle of evidence to prove that even if Greene was not the author of the Groatsworth of Wit that it has any significance as to the authorship of Shakespeare.
71. There is not a microscopic bit of evidence for the elimination of Shakespeare as author of his works in saying that the absence of "of Stratford" after all the references to Shakespeare mean that they cannot be used as prove that Shakespeare of London and Shakespeare of Stratford are the same man. The monument, the testimony of the sightseers who came there as a tribute to the memory of the poet, the historians and others is proof enough.
72. If Shakespeare did not sign his will himself, as has been claimed, it still does not prove that Shakespeare did not write the plays.
73. There is no proof that the Ashbourne portrait of Shakespeare is Oxford as shown by an imagined Oxford crest on a ring that he is wearing. The portrait has already been proved to be a forgery as it relaltels to Sshakespeare.
74. If you cite the absence of Shakespeare from Peacham’s lists of great writers as evidence that Shakespeare was not worthy to be cited, be sure to mention also that the noted historian William Camden did include Shakespeare in a similar list.
Though there is more to be said, this is a good place to stop writing. There are more specific Oxfordian "proofs" that can be alluded to, but I believe that they all can be denied by extrapolating from the foregoing precepts. When we separate facts from opinions there is nothing left.
I firmly believe my six dozen statements eliminate Oxford and all other claimants to the Works of Shakespeare. If the Oxfordians wish to continue the debate, they must start with a whole new set of proofs and not repeat those here demolished. I promise to listen. Write to me at avon4 at Juno(dot)com for the missing numbers or for a spirited discussion of the aforementioned points.
--Louis Marder (talk) 14:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
It is now alleged that Amelia Bassano Lanier actually wrote those famous dramas. She was an italian jewish dame living in England and the first one to publish a poems book of her own in 1611. The events of her life match well with topics found in "Shakespeare's" dramas. 82.131.210.162 (talk) 14:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
I restored my edits to the page which introduce a summary of the educational arguments for alternative authorship and expand the section on Sir Henry Neville. I don't appreciate my edits being reverted. If you don't like my edits then improve them, don't delete them. The need for a debate point summary and inclusion of a section for Sir Henry Neville are glaringly obvious needs for the page. If anything we need to go further than the edits I have made which are only a step in the right direction. Right now the article is a wall of text and needs more organization. One basic way to do this is to summarize the main points into a list as I have done and refer to the appropriate paragraph below for details. Also, the trivial mention of Neville understates his importance as a contender. His claim is at least as good as the others from a factual point of view. I realize he is a "new" contender and does not have the history the others do, but that in itself should not be a reason for marginalizing his appearance. John Chamberlain (talk) 23:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong, I am an authorship doubter and have signed the declaration. But you might want to review the rules and policies of editing, otherwise you end up hurting the overall defendability of the article. Also, Wikipedia frowns on "lists", and encourages prose instead. In terms of expanded Neville stuff, all from one book, then you'll better to add them to the article on Neville under the authorship theory section. Smatprt (talk) 08:11, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
I notice that most of the article seems to have been written or heavily edited by people who believe Shakespeare was the author of the plays and apparently consider challenges to Shakespeare authorship trivial. I think it is rather obnoxious for those people to be imposing their viewpoint on a page that is specifically created to state the case for the authorship challenge. Stratfordites have the main page to go on about Shakespeare as much as they like. The authorship questioners don't go to the main page and start mutilating it with doubts and anti-stratfordian edits, so I think they deserve the same courtesy on their page.
People who come to this page want to know the arguments for the authorship controversy so please respect that. John Chamberlain (talk) 23:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
To me, the main arguments against Shakspere do not consist of an interpretation of the work as autobiographical and finding parallels in it with one's candidate. This might be true of the Oxfordian case but it is not true of the Baconian case. I see two main problems with Shakspere as author. There is evidence that the Strachey letter which sourced The Tempest was restricted to members of the Virginia Company council of which Shakspere was not a member. In other words, it it very unlikely he would have seen it. Also there is evidence that Shakspere's company did not act The Comedy of Errors at it's first known performance at Gray's Inn 1594 and that it was performed by the Gray's Inn players. Facts also point to the Inns of Court law schools excluding outsiders such as Shakspere in the 1590's so it is very unlikely that any work of his would have been performed there. In other words, the author of The Comedy of Errors was most likely a lawyer. See Baconian theory article for more details. Puzzle Master (talk) 18:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
The traditional propaganda is that since Heminge and Condell have two dedications in the First Folio then they must have collected the plays together. Note the following.
One of Ben Jonson's biographers David Riggs believes his contribution to Shake-speare’s First Folio ran deeper than a couple of commendatory verses:
"… the men who prepared the folio for the press (and Jonson may well have been one of them) remade Shakespeare in Jonson’s image. Heminge’s and Condell’s prefatory letter “To the Great Variety of Readers” echoes Jonson’s Induction to Bartholomew Fair … The prefatory poems by Jonson, Hugh Holland, James Mabbe, and Leonard Digges transform Shakespeare into a specifically literary figure whose works have achieved the status of modern classics; the closest analogue to these tributes are the poems prefixed to Jonson’s 1616 folio. The scribes who prepared the copy for the Shakespeare folio abandoned the “light pointing” or “playhouse punctuation” of the Shakespeare quartos and adopted the so-called logical pointing that Jonson had employed in his Works (1616). The extensive use of parentheses, semicolons and end-stopped lines in the 1623 folio owes more to Jonson’s example than to Shakespeare’s habits of composition" (see Riggs, David, Ben Jonson : A Life (Harvard University Press: 1989), p.276).
The “echo” that Riggs refers to in the Induction from Bartholomew Fair concerns Jonson's address to his audience:
"and it shall be lawful for any man to judge his six-pen'orth, his twelve-pen'orth, so to his eighteen pence, two shillings, half a crown, to the value of his place, provided his place get not above his wit"
In Shake-speare's First Folio dedication “To the Great Variety of Readers” which has the names John Heminges and Henry Condell at the end, we find:
"Judge your six-pen'orth, your shilling's worth, your five shillings' worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the just rates, and welcome."
So there is evidence here that Heminge and Condell's First Folio letter was written by Ben Jonson and so it is not demonstrated that Heminge and Condell organized the First Folio printing. Puzzle Master (talk) 18:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
This is a dubious claim not worthy of entry into an encyclopedia. Unless a reference is provided showing the results of a statistical survey amongst anti-Stratfordians then the claim has no basis, whoever espouses it. What's more, being placed in the lead, it reads like propaganda from an Oxfordian editor hoping to recruit to his cause on the basis of what is popular is cool to subscribe to. I strongly object to this! Puzzle Master (talk) 09:30, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
This theory has been around for 200 years and has got nowhere. That says it all. It's a crank theory maintained by cranks and should not be included in a serious encyclopedia. What's more, most academics think so and who are we to question their wisdom? If you want this article deleted then sign below. Felsommerfeld (talk) 15:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
It appears Barry is in attack mode once again. I added in several sections to the Bacon theory article, got thanked by Barry on my talk page, then attacked here and elsewhere. I'm not sure but is this the definition of passive/aggressive? :) The good news is that he and other editors actually thanked me for making the Bacon theory article more balanced and more eligible for GA. Regarding Barry's accusations above, Barry is misleading everyone by saying my edits were against the recommendations of the reviewers. The independent reviewers are not part of Barry's 2-man consensus. Just check the talk page and see for yourself. And his attempt at banning me for daring to touch his article resulted in a quick and immediate "NO" from the first administrator he whined to. Dredging up similar attacks that resulted in numerous administrators denying action and chastising the complainers about deleting properly referenced material (my pet peev) is just a smokescreen and a method of bullying other editors away from "his" article. Same old... Smatprt (talk) 19:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
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